Typical online backup or synchronization systems provide synchronization of data within a predetermined folder on each of a plurality of devices. A user may place a file into a designated folder on a first device, and the file may be copied via a network, such as the Internet, to similar designated folders on one or more additional devices. The user may edit the file on any device, and upon saving the edits, the modified file may be copied or synchronized to each other device.
While these systems allow users to work on what are effectively the same data files in a variety of locations, users must still manually manage which files are synchronized, by adding or removing files from the designated folder. For example, because many subscription-based synchronization systems have data limits, a user may manually remove older files from the designated folder to free space for new files. If the user then needs to work on the older files again, the user may need to repeat this process in reverse. Accordingly, management of which files are synchronized may be cumbersome and time-consuming.
Additionally, because the user must manually move files to and from the designated synchronization folder, the user may unintentionally create multiple versions of a file. For example, if a user copies a file from a work folder to the synchronization folder, rather than moving the file, the user will have separate copies of the file and may later have to determine which file is the latest version. Furthermore, because designated synchronization folders may be in different locations on different operating systems or versions of operating systems, the user may need to remember multiple storage paths for the same file.
Additionally, once a file is synchronized to multiple devices, it may not be clear on which device the file was initially created. This may be confusing to a user who may think of a file as “the document I created at home on Saturday,” rather than by name or path.
Other systems attempt to avoid the management required when using designated folders by creating application-specific libraries for data. For example, images may be associated with a photo viewing application and stored in a special library for the application. This library may be synchronized to libraries on other devices of the user, allowing the user to view the same images in photo viewing applications on each device. While this avoids folder-based synchronization management, each file type to be synchronized must be manually configured by the system manufacturer, and because files are only stored in the application-specific library, the files may only be accessible via the application. Accordingly, use of different file types by a single application may be complicated or impossible, if the application has not been explicitly configured to utilize multiple libraries. For example, while a word processing application may be explicitly configured to access a photo library to insert images, it may not have been configured to access rendered images of a 3D drawing application. In such library-based systems, because the user cannot traverse a directory structure to access the rendered images, the user may be unable to add the images to a word processing document.
Accordingly, none of these systems provide an easy and intuitive system for a user to access all of their recently modified or created files, regardless of file type or storage location, on any device.